Affiliated Scientists

Affiliated Scientists are part of the OTRU team as collaborators on select projects and as contributors to OTRU’s mission of generating and providing knowledge for tobacco control efforts in Ontario and beyond.

Susan Bondy

Susan Bondy is an Associate Professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. She is also Program director for the MPH in Epidemiology. Dr. Bondy received her MSc in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from the University of Western Ontario and PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Toronto. Her areas of research include: monitoring of alcohol and tobacco use and public opinions on tobacco control policies; psychoactive substance use and associated health problems; and health services research, particularly in the areas of mental health and addiction, as well as cancer detection and treatment. She has experience training graduate students and public health professionals in the analysis and use of survey methods and data in population health. Her research activities related to tobacco include the Ontario Tobacco Survey (a cross-sectional survey and panel study of smokers), as well as policy intervention studies and research on the impact of pharmaceutical therapies for cessation.

Joanna Cohen

Joanna Cohen is the Bloomberg Professor of Disease Prevention and the Director of the Institute of Global Tobacco Control at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She also holds an appointment in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Dr. Cohen obtained her PhD in Health Policy and Administration from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill and her MHSc in Community Health and Epidemiology from the University of Toronto. She has been involved in tobacco policy research for 20 years. Trained in epidemiology and health policy, her research interests focus on the factors that affect the adoption and implementation of public health policies and on evaluating the beneficial effects and the unintended consequences of such policies. She is a Senior Editor of Tobacco Control and on the Editorial Board of the Canadian Journal of Public Health, and has been appointed to the Food and Drug Administration’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (2013-2017).

Tara Elton-Marshall

Dr. Tara Elton-Marshall is an Independent Scientist with the Institute for Mental Health Policy Research at CAMH, an Assistant Professor in the Clinical Public Health Division at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Western University. Dr. Elton-Marshall evaluates addiction and substance use-related policies and programs with the goal of providing the evidence needed to strengthen future policy and programming and thus reduce addiction and substance use problems. Her research conducted in seven countries to date has provided the evidence base for restricting tobacco packaging and product design characteristics (for example, smoother sensation) that increase misperceptions of reduced harm. She has examined factors associated with problem gambling among adolescents in three provinces, and she is the co-principal investigator of a study evaluating the impact of the legalization of online gambling in Ontario. She is also interested in health disparities in mental health and addiction, psychosocial mediators of addiction, and health equity in policy and programs. She has published several papers examining disparities in health among First Nation, Inuit and Métis youth in Canada. Her goal is to ensure that policies and programs are equitable, appropriate, and effective for vulnerable populations, both nationally and internationally.

Emmanuel Guindon

Emmanuel Guindon is the inaugural Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis (CHEPA)/Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care Chair in Health Equity, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact (HEI) and an associate member of the Department of Economics at McMaster University. Prior to joining McMaster University, Emmanuel was on Faculty at Université de Montréal and a staff economist at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. Emmanuel’s research interests cover a broad array of topics in health economics, health behaviour, health services research and applied econometrics.

Peter Selby

Peter Selby MD is the Chief of Primary Care, Director of Medical Education, and a Clinician Scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). He is a Professor in the Departments of Family and Community Medicine, Psychiatry, and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. He is also a Clinician Scientist in the Department of Family and Community Medicine. Dr. Selby is the Executive Director and creator of the TEACH project – a continuing education certificate program in Applied Counselling for Health with a focus on smoking cessation, through the University of Toronto. Dr. Selby’s research, as a Principal Investigator at the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit, includes smoking cessation especially in smokers with co morbid conditions. As the Principal Investigator of the STOP Study, he investigates the effectiveness of NRT and counselling in different types of intervention settings. He is also the PI of CANADAPTT- a unique Canadian Smoking Cessation Guideline development and dissemination project. Dr. Selby also continues his clinical research with pregnant women who use substances and is the PI of a knowledge translation program (PREGNETS) to increase the adoption of evidence-based interventions with pregnant smokers.

About OTRU

The Ontario Tobacco Research Unit (OTRU) is a Canadian leader in tobacco control research, monitoring and evaluation, teaching and training, and is a respected source of science-based information on tobacco control. We also apply our skills to other areas of public health.